Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Youngest
Daughter said, with excitement, “In band class today we watched a leadership
video.I learned that if you quickly
clasp your hands together with your fingers interlocked, then if you’ve got the
left thumb on top then you are right-brained, and you are a good kisser, but
if...”

Me:You’re a good what?

YD:A good kisser.But if the right thumb is on top then you are
left-brained, and a good thinker.

Husband: Where did you learn
that?

YD:I learned it from the guy in the leadership
movie we watched in music class.The
guy’s name was Tim.

Me: Why were you watching a
movie in music class?

Son:Tim?!“There are some who call me Tim.”

(Husband and Son imagine
Monty Python’s Tim the Enchanter starring in a leadership video.Teaching people to clasp their hands
together.)

Me:Wait a minute.What you’re saying is that if you are a good
kisser then you’re not a thinker?And if
you are a good thinker then you’re a terrible kisser?

Husband:Why does the left thumb on top mean you are
right-brained?

YD:Because the right side of the brain governs
the left side of the body.

Husband:Which side do you use to talk with?

YD:Well, what side of your mouth are you using?

Husband:I speak out of both sides of my mouth.

I’m glad my daughter
learned some good lessons about leadership from this video.By Tim.In music class.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

That’s me this morning before dawn, opening and closing the
door (which makes far louder a noise than I intended), turning on all the hall lights by mistake,
interrupting the few other early morning risers. I’m just bumbling around at 6:15 in the
morning, wondering who Jesus is.

This year at the retreat we have an honest-to-God prayer
room. Some participants have asked for
this for years, but for whatever reason it didn’t happen until this year. I thought that simply an empty room with a
few chairs would suffice. After all, one
can pray just about anywhere, right? Happily, somebody else, not me, is in
charge of setting up the prayer room.

Early Saturday morning I decide to go to the prayer room to
say a quick prayer for my parents. I am
always saying quick prayers for my parents, so I’m expecting nothing special. What
I find is different and better than a sparse room. The lights are dimmed and there are candles,
a figurine of people standing in a circle holding hands, a mini-waterfall, and
some books. One is titled “Jesus
Calling.” Well, I guess Jesus is calling
me to stay in this room a while.

For a while I just stand, contemplating the quiet and calm. Then,
feeling too closed in, and I decide to open the blind. It is still quite dark, but the outside
floodlights illuminate the steady snow, falling on the trees and the bushes, on
the road and the fields, on the just and the unjust, on the weak and the
strong, on all the children of God. I
think of my father in Parkinson’s Land, of my mother in Caregiver’s Land, and
all the others stumbling through life and the approach to death. The falling
snow is too much beauty to comprehend.

There are paper and pens for writing prayers. This is helpful, as it makes me put my prayer
into intelligible words. I haven’t found
out this morning exactly who Jesus is, but I have found a place where I can write him a note, say
what’s going on, bare my soul, cry my eyes out, and thank God for reminding me of
beauty and sorrow so early in the morning.

A few minutes later I am heading to the exercise class,
ready to start my day.

* * * * *

It is now a week later.
I am not sure anymore exactly what I wrote in my prayer. Just asking God to help my parents through
their suffering, to give them joy and laughter as much as possible, and to be
with them always.

Photos were taken after prayer, just before exercise. I always find a way to stay busy.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Youngest Daughter is in the kitchen baking a cake, singing
the song “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Mulan with her own lyrics: “Missus, I’ll make a cook out of you!...
Let’s get down to stirring... with all the strength of a raging pie crust, as serious
as the dark side of the cake!” Earlier
this afternoon, tired of her wasting her brain in front of Phineas and Ferb, I
gave her a choice: “For dinner tonight you are going to make either a vegetable
or a dessert. You pick which one.” She will not let me see the recipe she is
using. Maybe it’s carrot cake, which
would qualify for both categories!

Meanwhile, Son is at the piano, pounding out John Williams' theme
from the “Superman” movie. It has a lot
of octaves and loud chords.

I am in the office, agonizing over the date of next year’s
retreat, listing the tasks my aunt needs to do to be ready to move to the
retirement home, and trying to ignore my sore throat and impending cold.

Oldest Daughter is at college, doing who knows what, but
probably pining away for the care package that I have not sent to her yet. Sorry, sweetie! I didn’t get to it yet. But don’t worry, it will not have any singing
rabbi dolls in it this time.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

A miracle occurred this morning: Youngest Daughter got
herself up for school on time!

Meanwhile, I overslept and didn’t get out of bed until
7:20.Maybe it’s because I face a big
to-do list today.My singularly
uninteresting and suburban-housewifely list is below, for those of you who love
reading lists.It’s now 11:00 AM and I
have gotten the groceries, made the appointment for the car, and started the
laundry.But it looks like there needs
to be another miracle for any more of my list to get done.(Notice how ‘write a blog post’ was not on my
list.) I think I ought to add 'Be grateful for small miracles' to my list.

Friday, January 20, 2012

I am outta here!I am
retreating for the weekend to my church’s annual women’s retreat.There is a winter storm scheduled to start
late tonight, into tomorrow morning, but I plan to get out of town before the storm
hits.

Last night at dinner we had this conversation in preparation
for the survival of the rest of the family, while I am gone.

Common Household
Husband:What should we have to eat
while Mom is away?

Son: Obviously,
we need Ho-hos, Doritos, nutter-butters...

Husband:What about the main course?

Youngest Daughter:Your hamburgers!

Son:We could have Twinkies, but they’re going out
of business.

YD:Your hamburgers, Dad!

Son:How about Cheese Whiz?

Husband:I don’t think I’ve ever had Cheese Whiz.Where
I grew up, they have Hickory Farms. There’s nothing like a Hickory Farms port
wine cheese ball! ... So, what do you want
for the main course?

Son:How about Chicken Parmesan?

Husband:(glares at son, because Husband does not want
to cook this weekend, and doesn’t know where to buy Chicken Parmesan)

YD: Do you mean
Parmesan Chicken?

I am hoping, for the pizza delivery person’s sake, that the
Wintry Mix is all over with by the time the Common Household wants its dinner
Saturday night.And it’s too bad that
Hostess Brands couldn’t have held off on the bankruptcy, because purchases of
their products will likely increase this weekend.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Today I welcome to the blog Youngest Daughter. The opportunity to post here is one of two rewards she earned today by writing a page of math work neatly and correctly. The other reward involved chocolate.

¡Hola! Mi con mucho gracias! I don’t know what I just said,
but I would like to let you know that the name that I will be using from now
on, Ailsa Roovene, is not a real name, but a pseudonym for another identity.
Anyways, I have come onto this blog today to speak of an important topic: The
Singularity of the Soul. The singularity of the soul is a very interesting
thing to speak of, and also can be very confusing to write about. So, please,
bear with me as I tell you all about it.

The singularity of the soul is a person’s self-awareness,
and the non-anyone-else-awareness. This may not be common among you grown-ups,
but it is certainly common among my fellow children. We of this age do not
understand the problems of the outside world, (at least, most of us don’t) and
don’t recognize others’ positions until they are described to us. And even
then, we may not be entirely clear on the topic. For instance, I, until a
moment ago, didn’t understand the difficulty of the teacher when grading 300
test papers. And even now, I still don’t fully grasp the enormity of the task
set to those poor teachers. This generation doesn’t think of life beyond their
scope of experience, and doesn’t grasp the difficulty of those in other positions
that we have not experienced ourselves.

In my opinion, this is because of the protected lifestyles
that most American children now lead. We don’t understand the situation of
starvation, because we have no idea how that could be in the perfect world that
we know. (Of course, some children actually do understand the difficulty of
these people, and the problems of the world. These children are called “those
who have the ability to step in to others’ shoes”.) Ahem. Anyways. We don’t
understand how the world could have evil in it that isn’t pure evil, or good
that isn’t pure good. Our life is centered around ourselves and our friends,
not caring for those, say, in Africa or India. Even if we are told, we don’t
care, since it isn’t important to the lives that we lead currently. The only
evil we are experienced with is the evil in movies and video games, and we know
that these aren’t real. We can’t care about the difficulty of others in other
places, even if we are told about it, because we don’t have the scope of
experience to understand their pain.

I hope you enjoyed my talk about: The Singularity of the
Soul. ¡Adios!

Sunday, January 15, 2012

What’s a girl to do when there is a scant 2 inches of snow
on the ground? Go sledding anyway!

Despite being in the final stages of planning the church
women’s retreat, I decided to brave the cold with Youngest Daughter yesterday.

We had a grand time. Playing outside eased the emptiness
caused by Oldest Daughter’s departure back to college. Trudging up the short hill kept at bay my
frustrating uselessness in the face of my Dad’s illness and my Mom’s frantic
caregiving. The snowfall may have messed
up somebody’s day, but it was right on time for me.

Common Household Mom engaging in her favorite winter sport

Youngest Daughter goes down backwards

Then today, Youngest Daughter was all, “I’m calling my
friends to invite them over!” She rarely
has this idea on her own, so I was all for it.
Soon we had four girls running around in the snow.

Enough energy to RUN up the hill.

Snowball fight!

Another creature had been out there in the night or early morning. Rabbit? Deer? Dog? Cat?

The girls stayed out there for a long time. Good thing, because it is forecast to rain
tomorrow. This snow will be GONE.

About Me

My name is Carolyn. I am a non-scientist living among scientists, and a Christian in an interfaith household. Dinner-time can get interesting sometimes.
To contact me, e-mail me at
leafmonster2000 -at- gmail -dot- com